THE ZERO KING: THREADS OF THE DEAD
The wind howled through the ravine, carrying with it the metallic scent of blood and iron. Zero walked alone, his blade sheathed at his side, his thoughts sharper than any weapon he carried.
Calden's memories still echoed in his skull.
Every time he extracted a soul's knowledge, it left residue—fragments of emotion, flickers of past regrets, even flashes of pain. But Zero had long since learned how to filter noise from value. What mattered wasn't the man. It was what he knew.
And Calden had known quite a bit.
The Hidden Prison
The Radiant Order. Their ranks. Their politics. Their weaknesses.
More importantly, the location of a hidden prison deep within the cliffs north of Merrow's End—a secret dungeon where failed heroes and traitorous villains were locked away to rot. Not dead. Not gone. Forgotten.
Zero's eyes gleamed with cold purpose.
Prisoners meant potential. Each one a story, a skill tree, a collection of tactical knowledge waiting to be extracted. He didn't need to fight armies. He just needed to harvest minds and let the world fight itself.
By nightfall, he reached the cliff pass Calden's memory had revealed. Hidden behind layers of illusion magic and natural camouflage, the prison looked like nothing more than a jagged rock face from the outside. But with the knight's memory guiding his steps, Zero touched the right sigil—an ancient rune buried beneath moss and stone.
The cliff shimmered, flickered, and vanished.
Behind it stood a black iron gate, chained and sealed with glowing holy wards.
Zero crouched low, examining the complex lock. The wards were old, drawn from Celestian scripture—the kind of magic heroes trusted because they never expected the damned to come looking for the damned.
But Zero wasn't a villain. Not yet.
He wasn't here to free prisoners.
He was here to pick their bones clean.
The War Mage
It took hours of meticulous work, but he bypassed the wards, slipped inside, and moved like a whisper through the narrow stone halls. Cells lined both sides of the tunnel—damp, rusted, and eerily silent.
Most prisoners were too weak to speak. Others snarled like feral animals. Some merely stared at him with hollow eyes that once burned with ambition.
Zero paused before one cell in particular. A man sat inside, legs crossed in meditation amid heavy chains. His body was covered with intricate, glowing runes—spellbinders meant to seal his formidable magic.
"Who are you?" the prisoner asked, his voice rough but surprisingly aware.
"No one," Zero replied, his face expressionless.
The man smiled bitterly. "Then you're exactly who should be here."
His name was Krel Vos, once a royal war mage, later branded a traitor after orchestrating a coup that failed by mere inches. He had lost everything—power, position, allies. But not knowledge.
Zero asked questions. Krel answered, believing him to be a curious wanderer or perhaps another criminal soul.
They spoke of forgotten magic, ancient curses, battlefield formations, and summoning rituals lost to time.
And when the old mage finally slumped from exhaustion, Zero stepped forward, unsheathing his blade with reverent silence.
Krel opened one eye. "So. It's that kind of visit."
Zero didn't lie. "You were already dead when they locked you away."
The Extraction
Then he placed his fingertips against Krel's forehead and began the memory extraction.
This one was different.
Krel's mind was a labyrinthine maze. Twisting, dense, filled with traps and illusions designed to protect his deepest secrets. Zero gritted his teeth as pressure built in his skull, the memories actively fighting back.
But he was ready.
He summoned his own mental defenses—walls constructed from the memories he'd already taken. Calden's discipline. The rogue's perception. He pushed through the searing pain.
And at the center of it all, he found a name.
Solarys.
Not a person. A relic.
A weapon hidden beneath the ruins of the old empire—buried deep, locked behind a labyrinth, and powered by ancient blood.
Zero's heart quickened. Not from fear. From potential.
Solarys was said to absorb energy and redirect it, to bend light and time in short bursts. With it, he could reshape battlefields, dismantle armies—become not just a tactician, but a force of nature.
Krel gasped, crimson blood running from his nose. The extraction had taken too much.
"You're not a prisoner," he whispered with his dying breath. "You're a monster."
Zero leaned down, his face inches from the fading mage.
"No," he said calmly. "I'm the end of kings."
And with a final shudder, Krel Vos was gone.
The Path Forward
Zero walked out of the prison before dawn. He left the cells untouched, their occupants unaware that something far worse than death had passed through their midst.
The wind outside tasted of frost. A storm was coming.
He looked down at his hand, at the faint glow of a new rune forming on his palm—a fragment of Krel's spell knowledge now permanently woven into his own blood.
One step closer.
The world still called its champions.
But now the Zero King had a map.
And the dead would be his cartographers.